certain the child would be properly nurtured. Only then could the old woman continue her circuit of the inner bomas. At the moment, she noticed that her bones did not feel the usual fatigue, and despite lingering fears about the nameless child’s future, that was as good a sign as any that Stillshadow had done the appropriate thing.
Butterfly Spring
Chapter Eight
At ten and two springs, Frog Hopping was considered neither a child nor an adult. He considered this a perfect age, with greater freedoms and few responsibilities. Neither disease nor leopards had taken him. Frog had survived an intense fever in his fifth spring. A plague of tiny red mites that had killed two other boma children in his seventh had not crawled in his ear to devour his
num.
He was a fine, knobby, gap-toothed boy the color of spearwood bark, with busy fingers and questing eyes.
Spring Gathering was Frog’s favorite time, a time when fortunes were told and dreams were danced by Great Earth’s wise and mysterious women. Such frenzied movement seemed to open a door to the sleeping world, the world in which all men spent half their time, a world as rich and varied as that viewed through open, waking eyes.
Some among them even believed that the dream world was the more genuine world, a world in which the four-legged still spoke to men, in which Great Mother and Father Mountain revealed Their faces. Who could truly say which world was more real?
At Spring Gathering, Stalker and the hunt chiefs came down from Great Sky to predict where water and hunting and herbs might best be found. If that lay many days’ run from the current locations, then some of the clans might move, or join boma walls as they did in the lean years. Frog knew of no Ibandi who had died from hunger, because the Circle was spread over a large enough area that none of the prey were hunted to death, and the foraging was always good
somewhere.
At the foot of the eastern edge of Great Earth stood the Life Tree, the largest baobab that any Ibandi had ever seen. Its branches were as wide as the horizon. Its top leaves supported the clouds.
Inscribed in the trunk were tens of symbols dreamed by dream dancers over the years: gnu and elephants and giraffes and clouds and women birthing children, as well as symbols no man could name.
This was the first year that Frog had been allowed to climb the Life Tree. Always in previous years he had been told he was too young, had been forced to watch as the other boys earned their bruises.
Now it was different. Now he waited with others of his age, untried boys hoping to prove their fitness to become hunters, perhaps even hunt chiefs.
Numbering hands of hands, the boys waited in eager rows. Beside Frog, his stepbrother Scorpion, no older but half a head taller, bent and whispered in his ear: “I will push you from the tree,” he said. “Today you die.”
That was just Scorpion’s attempt to make Frog so afraid that he might lose his balance and fall. Scorpion didn’t really mean it. Or so Frog hoped.
Then the starting drum began to beat. With a roar, the boys leapt eagerly out toward the great tree.
As a swarm, youngsters jostled and elbowed each other out of the way in a blur of thin, dark limbs, clambering up to the prize: a deerskin tied to one of the highest branches.
With despairing cries, one boy after another tumbled to earth. Most caught branches on the way down, but some few fell twisting onto the heaps of grass and soft branches clustered around the trunk. The grass below the Life Tree grew tall, but mothers sometimes crept out at night to push even more leaves beneath the tree, that their sons not cripple themselves in pursuit of glory. In truth, few were ever badly hurt, although lumps and bumps and sprains were commonplace, and baobab scars the source of mirth and merriment for moons to come.
And here, at last, was an arena in which Frog might outperform his brothers Hawk Shadow and Fire Ant. They were stronger and faster
Butterfly Spring
Chapter Eight
At ten and two springs, Frog Hopping was considered neither a child nor an adult. He considered this a perfect age, with greater freedoms and few responsibilities. Neither disease nor leopards had taken him. Frog had survived an intense fever in his fifth spring. A plague of tiny red mites that had killed two other boma children in his seventh had not crawled in his ear to devour his
num.
He was a fine, knobby, gap-toothed boy the color of spearwood bark, with busy fingers and questing eyes.
Spring Gathering was Frog’s favorite time, a time when fortunes were told and dreams were danced by Great Earth’s wise and mysterious women. Such frenzied movement seemed to open a door to the sleeping world, the world in which all men spent half their time, a world as rich and varied as that viewed through open, waking eyes.
Some among them even believed that the dream world was the more genuine world, a world in which the four-legged still spoke to men, in which Great Mother and Father Mountain revealed Their faces. Who could truly say which world was more real?
At Spring Gathering, Stalker and the hunt chiefs came down from Great Sky to predict where water and hunting and herbs might best be found. If that lay many days’ run from the current locations, then some of the clans might move, or join boma walls as they did in the lean years. Frog knew of no Ibandi who had died from hunger, because the Circle was spread over a large enough area that none of the prey were hunted to death, and the foraging was always good
somewhere.
At the foot of the eastern edge of Great Earth stood the Life Tree, the largest baobab that any Ibandi had ever seen. Its branches were as wide as the horizon. Its top leaves supported the clouds.
Inscribed in the trunk were tens of symbols dreamed by dream dancers over the years: gnu and elephants and giraffes and clouds and women birthing children, as well as symbols no man could name.
This was the first year that Frog had been allowed to climb the Life Tree. Always in previous years he had been told he was too young, had been forced to watch as the other boys earned their bruises.
Now it was different. Now he waited with others of his age, untried boys hoping to prove their fitness to become hunters, perhaps even hunt chiefs.
Numbering hands of hands, the boys waited in eager rows. Beside Frog, his stepbrother Scorpion, no older but half a head taller, bent and whispered in his ear: “I will push you from the tree,” he said. “Today you die.”
That was just Scorpion’s attempt to make Frog so afraid that he might lose his balance and fall. Scorpion didn’t really mean it. Or so Frog hoped.
Then the starting drum began to beat. With a roar, the boys leapt eagerly out toward the great tree.
As a swarm, youngsters jostled and elbowed each other out of the way in a blur of thin, dark limbs, clambering up to the prize: a deerskin tied to one of the highest branches.
With despairing cries, one boy after another tumbled to earth. Most caught branches on the way down, but some few fell twisting onto the heaps of grass and soft branches clustered around the trunk. The grass below the Life Tree grew tall, but mothers sometimes crept out at night to push even more leaves beneath the tree, that their sons not cripple themselves in pursuit of glory. In truth, few were ever badly hurt, although lumps and bumps and sprains were commonplace, and baobab scars the source of mirth and merriment for moons to come.
And here, at last, was an arena in which Frog might outperform his brothers Hawk Shadow and Fire Ant. They were stronger and faster
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